A World of Fragile Things
by She's a Star
Summary: "I'll miss the winter . . . a world of fragile things . . . " After her death, Satine looks back on the place and people she left behind.
1. I

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A World of Fragile Things 

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by She's a Star

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Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge belongs to Baz Luhrmann. The Lovely Bones, which this is based off of, was written by Alice Sebold. The title was taken from the song My Last Breath by Evanescence.

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Author's Note: I started this quite awhile ago, but abandoned it, and then I came across it again this morning and kept on writing. I shouldn't be getting into another chapter fic, but this one doesn't have much of a plot, so hopefully it won't be too much trouble. This is very inspired by The Lovely Bones (amazing book); so basically, this story is from Satine's point of view after her death, looking back on the Moulin Rouge. It will jump around in time quite a bit; hopefully I won't confuse you too horribly. :-)

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I.

When I was four years old, my mother died. Being a child, of course I couldn't understand why she got so still, why she looked more beautiful than she ever had before, and yet I feared her. I had never feared my mother before, and it was unsettling.

My father's best friend was an absinthe bottle, the Green Fairy his paramour, and the only tragic realization that struck him with my mother's demise was that he had no idea how to care for a child. Unlike my mother, I had always been afraid of him, perhaps because he never smiled and always looked so clumsy and cold. 

For two years, we lived amongst one another without ever truly being together. We would shoot bewildered glances back and forth with the same blue-green eyes, endlessly wondering why we'd been cursed to suffer a presence we couldn't even begin to understand. Finally, when I was six, he grew tired of me, decided that he couldn't bother with his own daughter any longer. He gathered together my shabby assortment of dresses and tiny rag doll that I'd christened Gwendolen (after my mother), wrapped my tiny hand in his own foreign, calloused fingers, and led me outside the only place I'd ever known and into the Underworld.

He knew Harold Zidler well - probably because he spent so much time at the man's beloved bordello - and I can only remember staring up at the smiling man with the rosy cheeks and jovial chuckle and instantly loving him. He was not at all like my father; not cold and unfeeling - instead, he smiled when he met me and bent down to shake my hand. His hand was warm, not like my father's, and it made me like him more.

He asked me my name, even though my father had introduced me moments before, and I told him distractedly, with a sort of childish awe in my voice.

"Satine," he'd repeated, smiling. "That's a beautiful name. The name of a star."

I giggled a little then, only because the sentence sounded so _big_ and intriguing and important. _The name of a star._

My father left, a storm brewing in his eyes so like mine. 

I never saw him again.

I quickly forgot my father, though clung to my mother's memory and wondered vaguely if she would ever return to me. 

There were other little girls there, two of them, and we became instant friends. Nini (you couldn't call her Antonia; she hated that name) was best for sneaking food from the kitchen and having make-believe adventures as we invented fantasies of pirates and kidnapped princesses and swashbuckling heroes. Katie and I had tea parties with our dolls and stuffed animals, dressing extravagantly in the too-big costumes that Elizabeth, the seamstress, allowed us to borrow sometimes. We dreamed of being perfect society ladies; of attending balls and stringing along countless suitors and being taking turns being bridesmaids when each of us got married.

The day after I died, Katie found the chipped porcelain tea set that we'd played with so adoringly and ran her fingers over the pieces with tears in her eyes. I wished she wouldn't cry, but she'd always been sensitive.

Nini hadn't cried. We'd grown apart, she and I, though it was hard to distinguish when. We'd always bickered a little bit, but even after I'd become the infamous star of the Moulin Rouge, she hadn't hated me. Not really. Not until the morning in December.

It was a year before Christian had come, and I'd gone up to her room to see if she was going to get up for rehearsals - she had a habit of consuming just a bit too much absinthe (usually due to the fact that she challenged a few of the rakes that haunted the bar to drinking contests...and won) and then sleeping until past noon. I found her unconscious, badly beaten, her face bloodied and disfigured. It turned out that one of her customers - a man that I was meant to service, but then ended up changing plans the last minute - had done this to her.

She never forgave me, after that.

She was always a skeptic, cynical, to the point where Katie and I would snap at her sometimes in pure disbelief, wondering how anyone could possess so little faith and still find the will to live.

"It's the truth," she'd always retort defensively. "Sooner ya give up on silly dreams, the better."

It was strange, really, that she was the one that had the most notorious romance of us all: ever since the Argentinean had come here, a few years before I met Christian (everything, it seems, is divided in my life: before and after I met Christian. I suppose that's what love does to you), he'd been quite smitten with her, but in a way that wasn't at all like a classic love story. He would go around flirting with the other girls constantly, wooing them with richly murmured _'yo quiero'_s and _'mi amor'_s, always checking to see that Nini scowled as she watched.

She always did.

They bickered a lot, getting into ridiculous arguments that ended in slammed doors, shouted 'fuck off!'s from Nini and frustrated yells from the Argentinean that were often accompanied by, "That woman is impossible!"

But everyone knew that they cared for each other, and it was something a bit reassuring to all of us: even Harry didn't have the heart to lecture her, because he knew that Nini would do something awful if accused of breaking the only rule and falling in love. 

A few days after Opening Night, Nini couldn't find her cigarettes, and she lost it, throwing things and yelling out obscenities that could probably be heard across the continent.

She always reacted to things strangely.

No one dared go near her but the Argentinean, who murmured something in that dark velvet voice of his and rather tentatively kissed her hair. That night, they danced one last time, raw footsteps echoing throughout the empty Moulin Rouge.

There was something so utterly tragic in that.

Outside, in the desolate courtyard, Christian stood, listening, as snowflakes swirled around him and his breath appeared in tiny mists, drifting from chapped lips.

_Why does my heart cry . . ._

We both watched the scene, quietly, and somehow I felt as though we were together again. 

I think he did as well, because he smiled a bit, a sad, wizened sort of smile that looked so out of place next to those naive eyes.

"You know," I'd said once, offhandedly, as we watched the sunrise dance, a majestic myriad of colors, "Forever scared me until I met you."


	2. II

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A World of Fragile Things 

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by She's a Star

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Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's reviewed so far. :-) I do it for you, darlings! (Well, that was emotional.)

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II.

To my knowledge, three men truly loved me in my life. 

One was crying now, rocking slowly back and forth, shrouded in darkness as he stared out at the sky and felt so insignificant, wondering how it could have ever served as an ethereal sort of ballroom. 

Another stared at pictures, fondly, missing his little sparrow, knowing only now that she had been like a daughter to him, that he had cared for her so deeply, and wishing that he wouldn't have been so cold, knowing that there was no 'on with the show' anymore.

And a third sat, stunned, pretending not to care, knowing that he shouldn't care, knowing that she was only a creature of sin, a whore, a trollop. He hadn't cared about her, not really, and he didn't care that she had passed away. Guilt didn't haunt him, hiding in corners and waiting to pounce when he least expected it. He did not love her, he did not love her, he did not love her.

I missed them all in different ways; Christian because he was my Romeo, my starry-eyed poet who somehow made life so much richer than it ever could have been without him. Harold because despite everything, despite the fact that at times I felt like nothing more than his marketing gimmick, I knew that he had always loved me, and I missed him. He was the closest thing to a father, to a family, that I'd ever had. 

And the Duke . . .

He had terrified me in a way no one else ever had. He had fooled me completely, tricked me into believing that he was nothing more than a rich, lovestruck imbecile. And then he had suddenly become cold, dangerous; he had chilled me to my very soul, he had cracked my perfect, icy exterior, and I had cried in front of him. Begged him not to hurt me.

I had never done that before.

Perhaps I just missed the fear he instilled in me. I missed the awful shivers that ran up and down my spine, the sense that I could never understand him and didn't want to because even Satan's whore couldn't understand that kind of darkness. 

I missed feeling alive.

As the curtain closed on Opening Night, as applause thundered in all its surreal splendor, as I left the binds of the strange beauty men seemed to find in me, he walked away, alone, into the snow. Funny, isn't it, that we disappeared at the same time, both deprived of what we truly wanted? 

Both alone in the rising cold.

~

Christian received a letter from his mother a week after my death. She hoped that he was well; she, his father, and his sister Carolyn all missed him dearly; that charming Miss Morwood had gotten married; did he remember when he used to be so very smitten with her a few years back?

He had laughed, bitterly, at how trivial it all was, and lost himself again in an acid green sea.

~

Nini had always loved the Moulin Rouge; she'd never had any ambition to leave; she'd just been grateful that she had it as good as she did. I'd always secretly envied her ability to do this, because I'd always wanted something more, and hated myself for doing it because I knew it couldn't happen.

She loved everything about it: the absinthe, the swearing, the diamonds alight with flame, the dancing. Especially the dancing, and she'd always been the best one - passion shone through when she danced; pure, wild, reckless passion. 

I always thought that was what drew the Argentinean to her in the first place. He was quite the dancer himself, and on the few rare occasions where they got along long enough to dance together, every inhabitant of the Moulin would watch them with rapt attention.

There was something captivating between them, something that had to remain unspoken because words couldn't do it justice.

"If I could do anything," Christian said to me once, "I'd want to be able to write that."

"Well," I'd replied, feeling that foolish smile spread across my face that was only present when I was with him, "I think if anyone can do it justice, it's you."

He simply laughed and kissed me lightly, and we left the stuffy dance hall together.

I miss that the most, I think.

~

I could never picture Marie as a courtesan, though I knew she had been even more infamous than I had. There was something reassuring and warm about her, something tired, but in a soft way, like a worn blanket that seemed better than dark satin sheets. She always smelled of peppermint and cigarette smoke ("Damned addiction; listen to me, dearie, don't you pick up the habit, it's awful."), and she'd always had a soft spot for me. 

"Now, lovie, I don't want you to do what I did," she told me once as she helped me dress to perform. "Don't stay here until you're old and ugly and not even your own husband gives a damn about you anymore."

"Marie!" I'd reprimanded, and I can still remember my shocked expression in the looking glass, "Harry loves you!"

"Aw, hon, it just becomes part of who you are after awhile," she'd replied, with a strange sort of smile. "It's not so much romantic after awhile as absolutely necessary."

This scared me, I remember, because it seemed strange to simply coalesce with another person like that after awhile.

Within a week, Christian and I were like that, only the rush of new romance never truly wore off with us. It would have, I think, if we had been given time, but the prospect isn't frightening anymore somehow - on the contrary, it sounds soothing. Comfortable.

Like a sunrise, a flannel robe, a cup of tea that's just the right temperature, and 'good morning' in a voice that feels like heaven somehow.

Maybe I only want that now because I know with a certainty that I'll never have it.


	3. III

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Author's Note: Thank you so much for all of the reviews; I'm glad that people are enjoying this! It's a wonderful writing experience for me, and I truly love allowing my ridiculously poetic side to flourish. :-)

III.

The Moulin Rouge was being closed down.

"That bastard," Nini spat when it was confirmed, "That fucking goddamn _bastard_. Just 'cause his precious diamond kicked the bucket doesn't give 'im the right to throw us out on the street!"

No one bothered to calm her down.

Everything was falling apart, and if that didn't merit a cursing fest, then nothing did.

~

Toulouse started painting in blue.

~

Christian cried himself to sleep and wrote me love letters.

I wanted so badly to tell him that I read every one.

~

Everyone consumed dangerous amounts of absinthe, trying and failing to rid themselves of this cursed life.

"Ya know," Nini said, from where she sat in the Argentinean's lap with her arms slung over his shoulders, "I really can't stand you."

He grinned and kissed her.

"This," Arabia said in a undertone to China Doll, "Is the most dysfunctional romance ever."

I watched it and smiled, thankful for that, because if any romance could merit as classic, it was mine, and all that had resulted of that was a broken poet and a ghost clinging to silvery threads of a world no longer her own.

~

Christian began dreaming in black and white, seeing cigarette smoke and decay and rose petals raining - gently, gently - from an endless sky. There was always a shallow, desperate gasp; always uncontrollable coughing and a sense of doomed weakness.

And always, without fail, a tiny little drop of blood that was, in this new colorless purgatory, black.

~

It was nearly two weeks after I'd died, and people were beginning to worry about Christian.

"Someone has to talk to him," Katie said, twisting a lock of golden hair around her pointer finger. (A nervous habit.) "We can't just leave him to die in that garret of his. He's going to drink himself to death."

"Let 'im," Nini drawled. "He ain't got nothin' to live for anymore."

"Nini!" Katie cried, eyes widening in horror. "That's awful!"

"It's the truth, ain't it?" she asked sharply.

There was a numbed sort of silence, broken after nearly a minute of near-maddening tension. 

"Satine wouldn't want him to do this," Katie said finally.

No one argued.

~

He started singing to himself, softly, rocking back and forth, shaking with sobs but never giving up on the pained, rickety tunes. The dark garret filled with agonized whispers of storm clouds gathering; stars colliding; flying away because I was made for loving you; heroes, just for one day; how wonderful life is, and (please, please) don't leave me this way.

I wanted to cry, but couldn't, and there was something so purely and disgustingly inhuman in that. Somehow, against my will, I began to understand.

I didn't want to understand.

~

I clung to memories, and wanted to tell everybody that this was my song, but then realized that I was alone.

No one could listen.

~

"Ya think he's gonna kill himself?" Nini asked, taking another drag from her cigarette as she shifted in one of the garden chairs. 

No names were spoken, but only because they weren't necessary.

The Argentinean sighed heavily, reached over, and took the cigarette from her fingers; he placed it between his own lips, and she scowled at him.

"Bastard."

"Slattern."

Silence reigned for a moment, and they watched their breath form in front of them, indistinguishable against the smoke, as the sun glinted, garishly bright, off the freshly fallen snow.

"I don't know," he replied gravely. "I don't understand him anymore. He has been destroyed along with her."

Nini nodded, smirking a little to herself, but in a way that was saddened more than amused. "Fuck. She ruined him, didn't she?"

"Love doesn't ruin. It only scars."

She took in his words, seemingly unaffected - she always had a gift for heartless nonchalance - but I could tell that she was considering them. 

"That's disgustingly cliché, ya know that?"

He grinned at her. "Ah, sí, mi amor, but it can still be true."

She scowled and reached irritably for the cigarette. "Oh, gimme that."

Her hand brushed his, and he grasped it, their fingers entwining. A sharp intake of breath came from Nini, but neither moved.

He leaned a bit closer, and I knew she couldn't help but drink in the warm darkness of his eyes.

"Quiero sólo tu, sabes," he said, his tone a deep velvet whisper.

"You know I don't speak bloody Spanish," Nini responded, but her voice was weak, and for a split-second I could see myself as Christian turned to me, smiling, and offered his hand.

_My gift is my song . . . _

I knew somehow that she was feeling what I had.

He leaned in to kiss her, his lips centimeters from her own (I could hear her thoughts, somehow, so vividly, perhaps because they had once been my own - _'Oh, God, what should I do? Oh, God, what should I do?'_) when -

"Oh, for fuck's _sake_," she burst out as his eyes promptly shut and he collapsed to the ground.

She tried to tell herself that it was for the best, and I couldn't help but smile as I watched. This, this was something that I could relate to - missed opportunities, something you'd secretly wanted more than anything but couldn't quite admit it to yourself.

She stared at him critically, hands on bony hips, muttering distractedly to herself about what an unbearable jackass he was.

The moment had flourished in an instant and fallen just as quickly.

The cigarette lay forgotten, smoke asphyxiated by pearly white snow.


	4. IV

**Author's Note:** Okay. So there was a slightly . . . prolonged period between chapters on this one. I never wanted to give it up, though, simply because it's such an enjoyable writing experience. And by golly, I didn't!

I rather like how this chapter turned out, even though I'm not sure it has quite the same rhythm as the others, due to the aforementioned slightly prolonged period. I hope you all enjoy it – thank you for waiting!

IV.

            In January, my grave was showered with rose petals. Christian brought white ones and scattered them carefully, with a furrowed brow and utmost precision. He kissed one of them and pressed it against my name for a moment before letting it fall.

            Nini showed up with a single red rose and a scowl on her face. "Now, listen," she told the air, "I don't want to be here, mind. I'm just payin' my respects. Polite, s'all."

            And then she saw what Christian had left, and noiselessly plucked the petals from the rose. The wind caught them right away.

            Katie brought a bouquet of pink ones.

            She fixed her gaze on my name as she spoke. "I know you always liked the pink ones," she said, laughing a little. "They were in your dressing room, next to the birds. Desdemona and Othello." She laughed again. "Those were really awful names for birds. Always an actress, weren't you?"

            She set the roses down.

            "God, he misses you. Sometimes I'm so afraid, Satine. I think he's killing himself with this. Just . . ." She was crying now; her kohl streaked and swam right along with her words. "Just . . . watch him, will you? Please? Keep him alive somehow."

            I wondered for the first time if perhaps she was in love with him.

            It was something I had never even begun to consider before; that anyone else could have possibly loved Christian. The Duke had loved me, yes, but I'd known that, taken that knowledge easily.

            That someone could have secretly pined for the man I loved, for the one person in the world I belonged to . . .

            I began to realize how selfish I had been, in life.

            It's strange, an endless grey – the lessons that only death can teach.

~

            Tarot began to decay.

            Syphilis, the doctor said. She had a few months at best. Harold kept her in an abandoned room in the back; the others didn't like looking at her. She faded into nothingness, even as she could still breathe. Tattoo went to see her once, and placed tentative kisses in her hair.

            She never went back. Once was enough, she reasoned.

            Dying is a funny thing. You can't possibly understand it, unless it's happened to you, and if it has, afterward you're in no position to comfort anyone else who suffers the same affliction. It is the one pure loneliness I ever encountered.

            I knew that Christian would have tried, though, if he'd known. He would have sat next to my bedside, combing my hair and singing me dear little melodies. Writing nonsense fairytales, about enchanted sleep and beautiful maidens and princes and happily ever afters. His fingers would always be laced with mine, no matter how cold and dry my hands became.

            It was a horrifying prospect, to die without having ever been loved, but a real one. A true one.

            Three days after the only visit, Tarot slit her throat.

            They found her carefully curled up, as though in sleep, blooded rain drops staining her white nightdress.

~

            The Narcoleptic Argentinean downed a bottle of whisky and asked Nini to marry him.

            "What's _wrong with you, eh?" she demanded, and slapped him across the face. "Are you completely daft??"_

            He watched her go, and still felt her hand, sharp, against his face.

~

            The Duke went back to the Moulin Rouge in the middle of that month. He was received with glares and muttered curses, and it shocked him, a little. He had gotten used to the feigned respect that people regarded him with, and suddenly he was torn away from the polite little lies that had made up his entire world.

            He didn't know much about the truth, and didn't care to make the transition.

            During Sunday's twilight, while Marie prayed alone and the others watched Nini and the Argentinean dance, he went to the Red Room. He walked slowly, quiet, careful steps, and saw me in every shadow.

            "You haunt me," he told the room, the shrine to his darling, his diamond, the embodiment of everything she'd ever been, at least in his eyes.

            Fallen elegance, scented slightly of vanilla perfume; talcum powder; cigarette smoke; roses; sin. Sin, sin, sin, every blanket, every scarf, the ivory piano keys. They all positively screamed dirty little words, naughty echoes of everything that had ever happened in this place.

            He noticed something black, nondescript, crumpled into a corner on the bed. Carefully, he lifted it; it was a shawl, my favourite, he remembered the way it had curved gently over my shoulders.

            Jerkily, he pressed it against his face, inhaling it, breathing me in after I was nothing more than a slowly rotting corpse. Inhaling me, the essence of me, deep into his lungs, so I was the air he breathed, and he was truly bound to me. Beyond life and death, innocence and sin, Satan and seraphs.

            "You haunt me," he whispered again, into the carefully woven silk. He closed his eyes and in his mind – so hopelessly awry – I stood beside him.

            "Don't stop."

~

            "The Duke wants us out by April," Harold told Marie that night.

            She set her rosary on the dresser and turned to face him. "Well, then. It's set."

            "Yes," Harold agreed.

            The air was heavy with the scent of gardenias and remnants of whispered prayers.

            "You praying for us, then?" Harold asked, and nodded toward the rosary.

            Marie shook her head, and reached for the skirt she'd been mending. They didn't need mending anymore, of course, but habit was something one could never easily escape.

            "Why the ruddy hell not? We're going to need it," Harold said, slamming a fist down onto his desk. His eyes caught a photograph of me, smiling demurely back at him. His heart ached, for a moment. He didn't speak of it much, but he missed me. "Who do you pray for, then?" he asked, more calmly.

            "Her," Marie said simply. "And him."

            He didn't look away from the picture. "Did I kill her?"

            Marie stood up and set her sewing aside. She kissed his cheek. "Don't be ridiculous, love. What's done is done."

            He nodded distractedly and listened to the soft clicking of the door as she left. He reached for the picture frame and held it gingerly, searching. Flawless, porcelain skin. Blood red lips. Intricately styled curls. Coquettish smile.

            And eyes, he noted, that weren't quite alive.

            "God, I'm a fool," he muttered to himself, and wondered how he'd managed to ignore that she'd been dying even before the coughing started.

            Doomed even before he'd started to find the bloody handkerchiefs.

~

            Christian bought a bouquet of red roses at midnight and burned them, placing each one gently into the fireplace, watching the flaming scarlet curl up and wither into dust. They let go without a fight; shone for an instant before nothingness.

            Diamonds burn far less easily -- they are indulgent creatures, taking time to savor the flame.


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